I get the below configuration after I did a clean install of High Sierra. Can someone please enlighten me? Should I be bothered about this?
- What is "VM"?
- What is "2 Not Mounted"?
- Why "Shared by 4 Volumes"?
This is the 2nd attempt of my installing clean High Sierra. When I installed bootcamp and tried to use Parallels to load it, Parallels couldn't recognize my bootcamp partition. And now I'm feeling it's gonna be the same.
Yeah, the whole "shared by 4 volumes" and "2 not mounted" bits are connected. In a standard clean install APFS formats the physical drive with one container file that allocates drive space across 4 volumes as needed. These volumes are "VM"; the volume that everything is saved to such as the OS, all of your data, etc (typically named "Macintosh HD" but can be renamed by the user); another volume labeled "preboot", and another volume labeled "recovery." Preboot and Recovery are the 2 unmounted volumes. Preboot is mounted as you boot up the system from a fully off state and automatically switches to the main volume and unmounts, and Recovery is mounted when you enter macOS recovery mode. VM is "Virtual Memory" and it gets utilized when you open an application that require more RAM than your computer physically has.
Yeah, the whole "shared by 4 volumes" and "2 not mounted" bits are connected. In a standard clean install APFS formats the physical drive with one container file that allocates drive space across 4 volumes as needed. These volumes are "VM"; the volume that everything is saved to such as the OS, all of your data, etc (typically named "Macintosh HD" but can be renamed by the user); another volume labeled "preboot", and another volume labeled "recovery." Preboot and Recovery are the 2 unmounted volumes. Preboot is mounted as you boot up the system from a fully off state and automatically switches to the main volume and unmounts, and Recovery is mounted when you enter macOS recovery mode. VM is "Virtual Memory" and it gets utilized when you open an application that require more RAM than your computer physically has.
“shared by 4 volumes” refers to the APFS Container are shared by 4 volumes shown in your pictures:
VM: I guess it refers to “Virtual Memory"
Macintosh HD: Pink
Another 2 volumes that not mounted: I think one is recovery HD, but not 100% sure if this remains the same as before. I don’t know what the other one is but guess it is system maintenance or such related.
For APFS, all the 4 volumes share the entire container’s space so the free space are accessible to whoever needs it. And the volumes’ sizes will vary as the user’s use.
mnyarar wrote:
I get the below configuration after I did a clean install of High Sierra. Can someone please enlighten me? Should I be bothered about this?
No you should not bother with this.
you can see more in terminal, copy and paste:
diskutil apfs list
You can read more here: macOS 10.13 High Sierra: The Ars Technica review | Ars Technica
Since installing High Sierra I'm equally confused (and concerned) why I don't see any increase in the available disk space when I remove files, some as large as 500MB or more, from the Trash.
In Sierra, the space available increased immediately when I removed files from the Trash.
The new APFS file system under High Sierra seems like I don't have any control over my disk space anymore.
Confusion about APFS partition in High Sierra
